Hebrews 11

Last Sunday morning (4/27) Jeff Jue preached on Hebrews 11 in his sermon "What Is Faith?"

Jeff explained that while Senior Minister Liam Goligher is away for the next two weeks we'll be focusing on some of the themes of Hebrews 11 and 12. This sermon's focus is on faith. And what better place to look for a definition than Webster's dictionary which defines faith as, "Firm belief in something for which there is no proof." In our day and age this is how most people define faith. If someone says "take a leap of faith" they mean just act and hope for the best. Think about the term blind faith. If someone is following along with blind faith, it's a negative term that says you're not even willing to see the evidence around that's telling you not to go in certain direction. You still go and follow with blind faith. In many ways these definitions pit faith against knowledge or reason, as if faith is something that is ridiculous because it goes against what we can rationally conclude.

All these definitions of faith are negative as if faith is not something that you can demonstrate or prove. This is how the world defines faith. This is not how the Bible defines faith. J. Gresham Machen wrote, "True faith is not only based upon knowledge, but it also leads to more knowledge." Biblical faith is not a leap into the unknown, but in fact, it is founded upon something of great substance which is knowable and which will lead to even greater knowledge. This is the type of faith the world rejects and mocks, yet we as Christians stand upon it and hold onto it. Biblical faith is what should encourage us today.

There are two questions we should answer as we think about biblical faith.

• What is biblical faith?
• What does biblical faith do?

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